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Women's roles in the Bible

The status of women in the Christian Gospels

Women in ancient Israel:

Women's status and freedoms were severely limited by Jewish
law and custom in ancient Israel, as they were in essentially all other cultures
at the time. Generally speaking:

most were restricted to roles of little or no authority,

they were largely confined to their father's or husband's home,

they were considered to be inferior to men, and under the authority of men
-- either their father before marriage, or their husband afterwards.

From the Second Temple period, women were not allowed to testify in court trials. They
could not go out in public, or talk to strangers. When outside of their homes, they were
to be doubly veiled. "They had become second-class Jews, excluded from the worship
and teaching of God, with status scarcely above that of slaves."1 Their position in society was defined in the Hebrew Scriptures
and in the interpretation of those scriptures. More
details.

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Change in status: Jesus' radical treatment of women:

Christ overthrew many centuries of Jewish law and custom. He consistently treated women
and men as equals. He violated numerous Old Testament regulations, which specified gender
inequality. He refused to follow the behavioral rules established by the three
main Jewish
religious groups of the day: the Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees. "The actions of
Jesus of Nazareth towards women were therefore revolutionary."
1 Some examples
are:

He ignored ritual impurity laws: Mark 5:25-34 describes Jesus' cure of a woman
who suffered from menstrual bleeding for 12 years. In Judean society of the day, it was a
major transgression for a man to talk to a woman other than his wife or
children.

He talked to foreign women: John 4:7 to 5:30 describes Jesus' conversation with a
woman of Samaria. She was doubly ritually unclean since she was both a foreigner and a
woman. Men were not allowed to talk to women, except within their own
families. Jesus
also helped a Canaanite woman, another foreigner, in Matthew 15:22-28.
Although he described non-Jews as "dogs", he was willing to talk
to her, and is recorded as
having cured her daughter of demon-possession.

He taught women students: Jewish tradition at the time was to not allow
women to be taught. Rabbi Eliezer wrote in the 1st century CE: "Rather should the
words of the Torah be burned than entrusted to a woman...Whoever teaches his daughter the
Torah is like one who teaches her obscenity."5 Jesus overthrew centuries of
tradition. In Luke 10:38-42, he taught Mary, sister of Martha.

He used terminology which treated women as equal to men:

Luke 13:16 describes how he cured a woman from an indwelling Satanic spirit. He called
her a daughter of Abraham, thus implying that she had equal status with sons of Abraham.
"The expression 'son of Abraham' was commonly used to respectfully refer to a
Jew, but 'daughter of Abraham', was an unknown parallel phrase...It occurs nowhere else in
the Bible." 4 It seems to be a designation created by Jesus.

Luke 7:35 to 8:50 describes how Jesus' forgave a woman's sins. He refers to women and
men (i.e. "all" people) as children of wisdom.

He accepted women in his inner circle: Luke 8:1-3 describes the inner circle of
Jesus' followers: 12 male disciples and an unspecified number female supporters (Mary
Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and "many others.") It would appear that about
half of his closest followers were women.

He appeared first to one or more women after his resurrection: Matthew 28:9-10 describes
how Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary" were the first followers of Jesus
to meet him after his resurrection. (However, this account is contradicted by passages in 1 Corinthians, which state that the first person to see Jesus
was Cleopas, Peter or all of the disciples.)

Mostly women were present at Jesus' execution: Matthew 27:55-56 and Mark 15:40-41 describe
many women who followed Jesus from Galilee and were present at his crucifixion. The men
had fled from the scene. (John 19:25-27 contradicts this; the author describes John as
being present with the women.)

He told parallel male/female stories: The author of the Gospel of Luke and of Acts shows many
parallel episodes: one relating to a woman, the other to a man. For example:

Simeon and Hannah in Luke 2:25-38

Widow of Sarepta and Naaman in Luke 4:25-38

Healing of a man possessed by a demon and the healing of the mother of Peter's wife,
starting in Luke 4:31

The woman who had lived a sinful life and Simon, starting in Luke 7:36

"Luke expresses by this arrangement that man and woman stand together and side
by side before God. They are equal in honor and grace; they are endowed with the same
gifts and have the same responsibilities."

Some theologians have speculated that the author of the Gospel of Luke might
well have been a woman.

He expressed concern for widows: Jesus repeated the importance of supporting
widows throughout his ministry. The Gospel of Luke alone contains 6 references to widows:
(Luke 2:36, 4:26, 7:11, 18:1, 20:47 and 21:1)

Divorce: In Jesus' time, a man could divorce his wife, but the wife had
no right to divorce her husband. This practice is supported by seven references in the Hebrew
Scriptures (Old Testament) in which a husband can unilaterally give his wife a bill of divorce. There were
no references to a woman giving her husband such a bill. In Mark 10:11-12, Jesus
overthrows this tradition and states that neither spouse can divorce the other;
he treats the wife and husband equally.

Passages where Jesus apparently does not call for equality of the sexes:

There are two passages where Jesus deviates from his usual practice of treating women
equally:

Selection of his disciples: There are three conflicting lists of the names
of the 12 disciples that Jesus selected. In all cases, the disciples
were male. He later selected a total of 70 disciples; the gender makeup of the latter
group was not recorded. Some might well have been female.

In his defense, he might have chosen only single people because he
wanted disciples who were unencumbered with spouses. In first century CE
Jewish culture, unmarried women traveling with men would cause so much
criticism that the reception of Jesus' teaching by the public might have
been impossible.

Levirate Marriage: In Mark 12:18-27 Jesus answered a question posed by some
Sadducees. They described a woman who was widowed and required to marry her
brother-in-law. This was called a "Levirate" marriage. Their first-born son will
be considered to be the son of the deceased husband. In this case, they imagined that
seven brothers-in-law married her in succession without having a son.

Jesus could have
used the opportunity to preach on the unfairness and sexism implicit in this requirement of Jewish law (from
Deuteronomy 25:5-10). After all, the woman was not allowed to refuse to marry any of the
brothers, even if she despised some of them. Levirate marriage often
involved serial rape. But Jesus is not recorded as having condemned
the practice.

Again in his defense, he might have criticized Levirate marriage at the
time, but his words might not have been considered significant the
Gospel writers who thus might not have recorded Jesus' comments.
Alternately, they might have recorded Jesus criticism of Levirate
marriage in the original, autograph copy of their Gospels. However, a
later copyist might have deleted the passage. As archeologists are fond of
saying: "Absence of proof is not proof of absence."

There is a passage in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) where
Jesus is reported as having insulted a woman. He referred to her as a dog, implying that she was
sub-human.

Interpreting Matthew 15:22-28 literally:

She was described as a Canaanite. However,
Mark 7:25-30 identified her as Greek/Syrophenician. She had pleaded
with Jesus to cure her daughter who she believed was possessed by a demon. He first
ignored her, but then explained that he was sent only to bring the Gospel to
the Jews, not to the Gentiles such as she. Jesus cruelly replied to the
desperate mother that it was not right for him "to take the children's
bread and to cast it to dogs." i.e. it is not appropriate to take the
Gospel, which was intended only for the Jews, and offer it to Gentiles as
well -- here described as sub-humans. (Observant Jews in the 1st
century CE often
referred to all Gentiles contemptuously as "dogs.") She quipped back to
Jesus that even the "dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their
masters' table." Jesus relented and -- because of the mother's faith -- remotely cured the daughter
of demonic possession.

Jesus' response to the woman was uncharacteristic for him. As noted above, he often deviated greatly from Jewish tradition at the time and treated women as equals. Here, he appears is that he rejected the woman because of her race or her culture of origin, not because of her gender. Another possibility is that he responded to her in a tongue-in-cheek fashion rather out of anger or callousness.

Treatment of Mary Magdalene:

In Matthew 28:1-7, after Jesus' resurrection, "Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary" receive the first apostolic commission of any person -- to tell the good
news of the resurrection to the disciples. This is reinforced by Jesus' appearance
before the two women. The two Marys were thus the first apostles.

Some of the gospels and epistles from the very
early history of Christianity that never made their way into the official canon
described Mary Magdalene and other women as holding leadership positions within
the movement.

The Nazarene Way of Essenic Studies comments:

"Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the Gospels as being among the women of Galilee who followed Jesus and
His disciples. She was present at His Crucifixion and Burial, and went to the tomb on Easter Sunday to anoint His body. She was the first to
see the Risen Lord, and to announce His Resurrection to the apostles. Accordingly, she is referred to in early Christian writings as 'the
apostle to the apostles'." 8

References used:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

Christians for Biblical Equality are an Evangelical Christian group, which
opposes the vast majority of conservative Christian denominations by promoting gender
equality. Their essay: "Statement On Men, Women and Biblical Equality" is
at: http://www.cbeinternational.org